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Will they, won’t they? Dream sequences and virtualconsummation in the series Moonlighting

Wells-Lassagne Shannon

To cite this version:Wells-Lassagne Shannon. Will they, won’t they? Dream sequences and virtual consummation in theseries Moonlighting. Miranda : Revue pluridisciplinaire sur le monde anglophone. Multidisciplinarypeer-reviewed journal on the English-speaking world , Laboratoire CAS (Cultures anglo-saxonnes),2021, �10.4000/miranda.24852�. �hal-03253814�

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MirandaRevue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone /Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English-speaking world 20 | 2020Staging American Nights

Will they, won’t they? Dream sequences and virtualconsummation in the series Moonlighting

Shannon Wells-Lassagne

Electronic versionURL: https://journals.openedition.org/miranda/24852DOI: 10.4000/miranda.24852ISSN: 2108-6559

PublisherUniversité Toulouse - Jean Jaurès

Brought to you by SCD - Université de Bourgogne (Dijon)

Electronic referenceShannon Wells-Lassagne, “Will they, won’t they? Dream sequences and virtual consummation in theseries Moonlighting”, Miranda [Online], 20 | 2020, Online since 24 March 2020, connection on 08 June2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/24852 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.24852

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Will they, won’t they? Dreamsequences and virtualconsummation in the series Moonlighting

Shannon Wells-Lassagne

Introduction

1 This article deals with a series that continues to impact the TV and film landscape

today: Moonlighting, a fiction which appeared on American broadcast network ABC from

1985 to 1989, and which introduced Bruce Willis to the screen. The show dealt with a

fashion model, Maddie Hayes (played by Cybill Shepherd), whose funds are embezzled

by a fraudulent accountant and who finds one of her only remaining resources is the

co-ownership of a detective agency, The Blue Moon (named for a shampoo for which

she once modelled). Her partner at the agency is David Addison, aka Bruce Willis, who

has a somewhat dissipated and cynical attitude toward the business, in marked contrast

to Maddie’s more uptight stance. From one week to the next the two leads deal with

various absurdly complex cases (faking one’s death is a common phenomenon in the

world of Moonlighting, apparently), all while constantly bickering.

2 Of course, the storyline is not really what is groundbreaking or innovative about the

series: it was not necessarily the content, but the delivery, that made Moonlighting

unique. While creator Glenn Gordon Caron suggested that he had initially been inspired

by a performance of Taming of the Shrew that he had seen shortly before with Meryl

Streep and Raul Julia (Caron), Cybill Shepherd, who plays lead Maddie Hayes, rightly

remarked that the pilot was similar to screwball comedies Bringing up Baby and The

Philadelphia Story (Caron), and the series luxuriated in witty repartee and quick banter;

this may not seem revolutionary to viewers who have since experienced many an

Aaron Sorkin monologue, but at the time, the idea of an hour-long series, a length that

Will they, won’t they? Dream sequences and virtual consummation in the series...

Miranda, 20 | 2020

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traditionally indicated a drama, indulging in quick-witted banter essentially left behind

since classic Hollywood, was completely novel–its importance can perhaps be measured

by the ubiquity of this mixture of comedy and drama, or dramedy, on the small screen

today. J.P. Williams gives an apt description of the novelty of the series:

Moonlighting clearly exhibits the semantic features of television drama: serious

subject matter dealing with incidents of sufficient magnitude that it arouses pity

and fear; rounded, complex central characters who are neither thoroughly

admirable nor despicable; textured lighting–both the hard telenoir and the diffused

lighting accompanied by soft camera focus; multiple exterior and interior settings,

single camera shooting on film. But the series combines the “serious” elements

with the syntactic features of television comedy. These comedic features include a

four-part narrative structure (consisting of the situation, complication, confusion,

and resolution), the metatextual practices of verbal self-reflexivity, musical self-

reflexivity, and intertextuality, repetition (i.e., the doubling, tripling, and

compounding of the same action or incident until the repetition itself becomes

humorous), witty repartee, hyperbolic coincidence, and a governing benevolent

moral principle within which the violent, confused, often ironic dramas of good and

evil, seriousness and silliness were played out (90).

3 Thus Moonlighting’s invention of the dramedy is not simply a question of tone or genre;

as this quote makes clear, comic or dramatic tone is created through character,

aesthetics, narrative structure, as well as content. It is in its fusion of pertinent

elements of comedy and drama that Moonlighting is truly innovative. Its creation of

“dramedy” was a watershed moment in American television, though of course the

series was also taking its cue from venerable genres of early sound cinema like the

screwball comedy or the hard-boiled novel (particularly The Thin Man and its film

adaptations) and translating them to television’s changing structures and aesthetics,

participating in what has been termed the second Golden Age of television

(Thompson)1.

4 Beyond its generic innovations, its repeated use of reflexivity makes Moonlighting one of

the first examples of postmodern television. The series was constantly breaking the

fourth wall to have the characters refer to their fictional status (or the series as a

series): thus Season 3 famously began with Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis standing in

front of a desk on the set, introducing themselves in character as “Maddie Hayes” and

“David Addison”, and then welcoming the audience to a new season of the show (3.1);

David once joked that if he held Maddy any closer, they would all have to move to cable

television (2.8); and indeed, the final episode of the series interrupts its case of the

week to announce that the show is being cancelled by ABC, and ends with David and

Maddie running from one place to another trying to change the minds of television

executives (5.13).

5 However, arguably what it’s best known for is what they still refer to as “The

Moonlighting effect”. The series ultimately focuses on the romantic tension between the

two leads, constantly sparring but seemingly drawn to one another. Though the “will

they/won’t they?” narrative has long been a staple of the silver screen, translating it

into weekly episodes was more complicated–like its sitcom contemporary Cheers (NBC,

1982–1993), with a similarly mismatched couple (Sam and Diane), the writers struggled

to maintain the central tension without creating undue frustration for the viewer.

While David and Maddie continued to spar in “real/reel” life, the series offered relief

from this frustration in the form of regular dream sequences where they consummated

their relationship, either as themselves, or as other characters. Ultimately the show


Miranda, 20 | 2020

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kept the characters apart until the penultimate episode of season 3 (a total of 38 TV

hours of romantic tension), only to have the popularity of the show go into sharp

decline once the relationship was consummated. It is that fear that “consummation

equals cancellation” that is referred to as “The Moonlighting effect”2.

6 My contention is that all of these elements—generic hybridity, postmodern reflexivity,

and dramatic/romantic tension—coalesce in one of the series’ hallmark tropes: the

dream sequence. The show’s use of the dream sequence therefore becomes a means of

examining Moonlighting’s concerns with thematic content (primarily the gender wars

implicit in the massive arrival of women in the workplace of the 70s and 80s and post-

feminist insistence on the ability of the modern woman to “have it all”) as well as its

structural, generic, and aesthetic concerns, expanding the possibilities of what

television could do, and emphasizing its role as a worthy successor to the silver screen.

Though Moonlighting was in many ways a show fraught with difficulties and

imperfections3, it was also groundbreaking in both form and content for the small

screen, and the way it staged its nights through repeated dream sequences is in many

ways a crystallization of its innovations. Indeed, these dream sequences became a

veritable hallmark of the show, to the extent that a season 4 episode had David

hallucinating Maddie’s face in the telephone she had strictly forbidden him from using

to contact her (4.2). His response to phone-Maddie’s reprimand as he gives in to

temptation is indicative of the nature of the series: “You think I’d be used to these

dream sequences by now.”

Fig. 1

Dream sequences as Moonlighting’s calling card (4.2)

7 The “habit” of incongruity–of using old film techniques (like Claymation) to new comic

effect (though in an initially dramatic context)–is one that is consistent to the series.


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However, just as the show’s titular “Moonlighting effect” suggests a “before” and “after”

consummation (with a corresponding decrease in popularity and perhaps quality), so I

hope to show how the dream sequence also evolves through the course of the series,

offering a lens through which to view the changes to the fiction’s conception of

television and gender roles, its form and content.

8 Dream sequences are of course nothing new to screen fictions; indeed, more than one

critic has suggested that dream sequences began with film itself, whether they cite

Edwin S. Porter’s The Life of an American Fireman (1903) or the better-known example of

Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Junior in 1924 (Hatchuel 16). Interestingly, at about the same

time, writer and director René Clair suggested that film and dreams were linked:

The spectator’s state of mind is not unlike that of a dreamer. The darkness of the

hall, the enervating effect of music, the silent shadow gliding across the luminous

screen–everything conspires to plunge us into a dreamlike state in which the

suggestive power of the forms playing before us can become as imperious as the

power of the images appearing in our veritable sleep. (“Reflections of the Cinema”,

qtd. Burkhead 7)

9 Even more contemporary filmmakers have acknowledged this association: Martin

Scorsese, for example, admitted that his landmark film Taxi Driver was inspired by the

idea that films induce a dream state, and coming out of a dark theater into the bright

sunshine is akin to abruptly waking up (Bronfen 265).

10 Of course, the relationship between film and dream is not necessarily the same as the

relationship between dream and dream sequence. As James Walters noted in his work

on film,

[…] even from an early stage, cinema was committed to portraying a fantasy of the

dream experience rather than providing an accurate account. […] Thus, among the

multitudinous dream sequences observable in narrative cinema, a great many

present the dream as a stable, logical and discrete environment that possesses few

of the inconsistencies, perplexities or banalities of real-life dreaming. In this sense,

they function in the films as ‘worlds’ in their own right, contained within the wider

fictional world of the film. The dreamer, most often, then functions as a character

in that world, to the extent that we may even temporarily forget we are still

watching their dream at all (46).

11 Walter’s assertion that dream sequences have little to do with dreams, per se, and

much to do with the story the film is telling makes clear that dream sequences balance

content and medium, the story and the possibilities offered by film to tell it. The early

examples of the dream sequence bear this contention out visually: in both Porter and

Keaton’s work, dreams are central to the story, but the characters’ reveries mimic the

imaginative possibilities of the new medium, something made concrete onscreen when

narrative coherency demands that we see both dreamer and dreamed, using what were

at the time innovative special effects to insist on the uniquely filmic nature of the

sequence.


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Fig. 2 and 3

Edwin S. Porter and Buster Keaton: using dream sequences to tell a story–and highlight filmic status

12 Though these reflections deal with film, television may be even better suited to deal

with and specialize in dream sequences, given the sheer breadth of narrative (over

years and dozens of hours), combined with the technical and practical limitations of

television before the boom of luxury cable shows (limited budget, limited sets and

special effects, more or less permanent cast members), all of which combined to make

character study one of television’s strengths. As a means to represent the interiority of

these characters, then, the dream sequence is uniquely suited to the small screen, and

as Sarah Hatchuel suggests in her study on dreams in contemporary American

television, can serve different functions in the fiction in which they appear:

Dreams can be dramatic twists or “might have beens”; they can offer narrative

divergences; they can be the source of disorientation when they are clandestine–


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that is to say, when dreams are not announced as such; they can also explore

extreme or taboo situations, where TV series become the locus for ethical and

ideological reflection. (23, author’s translation)

13 Moonlighting, we will see, offers the taboo of what “might have been”, and in so doing

offers the viewer reflections on the show’s ostensible content—gender relations in the

post-feminist 80s—and its form, a worthy successor to the classic Hollywood fictions it

references.

14 The scope of this article would not allow for an exhaustive analysis of the dream

sequence in Moonlighting (there are 10 different episodes where this technique

appears4); instead, I would like to focus on two specific episodes, before and after the

dreaded Moonlighting effect, in the hopes that the comparison between these two

examples will highlight the changing dynamics that shaped the show and its hallmark

trope.

15 The first of these is probably the best-known, an Emmy award-winning episode

appropriately entitled “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” (2.4), where the

premise of an unsolved murder from the 30s (a woman and her lover killing her

husband), causes first Maddie, and then David, to dream of themselves as the wife and

lover in the story. Each is convinced that it is the opposite gender that is at fault, and as

a result, in a Rashomon-type twist, we have the same story from two very different

perspectives, where even hairstyle and costume differ to distinguish the perceptions of

the characters. Both the episode title and the crime itself of course pay homage to the

so-called “Double Indemnity Murder” in 1927, where Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd

Gray killed Ruth’s husband after having him take out a life insurance policy. This was

the inspiration for James M. Cain’s novels The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and

Double Indemnity (1943), both of which were famously and very successfully adapted to

the screen (by Tay Garnett in 1946 and Billy Wilder in 1944, respectively). The show

went to great lengths to ensure the noir aesthetics of the episode, filming only in black

and white to avoid the network broadcasting a color version, and hiring Orson Wells

[iconic director and star of noir classics like Touch of Evil (1958) and The Lady from

Shanghai (1947)], in what would ultimately be his last onscreen appearance, to

introduce the episode. Welles presents the episode as an oddity, a

giant leap backward. In this age of living color and stereophonic sound, the

television show Moonlighting is daring to be different, and share with you a

monochromatic, monophonic hour of entertainment. Approximately 12 minutes

into tonight’s episode, the image will change to black and white. Nothing is wrong

with your set! I repeat: nothing is wrong with your set. Tonight’s episode is an

experiment, one we hope you’ll enjoy, so gather the kids, the dog, grandma–and

lock them in another room. And sit back and enjoy this very special episode of

Moonlighting. (2.4)

16 This introduction was actually imposed by the network, fearing panicked viewers, but

the language is evocative of the aesthetic importance of these sequences–both a

throwback to the past and an experiment unique in “this age of living color”, one

sanctioned by a legendary figure from the silver screen. Clearly the series targets a

knowledgeable viewer, one well versed in film history, who can recognize the generic

allusions implicit in the episode title and associate the show with the actor famous for

The Third Man (1949).

17 The episode proper reinforces this link with the past, setting the scene in a dilapidated

nightclub (the scene of the unsolved murder) once famous among Hollywood’s


Miranda, 20 | 2020

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brightest stars (“they say that Judy Garland had her first kiss, her first date here!”), but

now unable to find a buyer (“available for sale or lease, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and

gatherings of all types!”), suggesting that the story to be told is only accessible through

dreams (and dream sequences). The specificity of the allusions goes even further: as

creator Glenn Gordon Caron notes, the two black and white sequences are meant to

evoke not just two points of view for the two characters dreaming, but indeed two

different forms of noir (associated with two different studios). While Maddie’s dream is

reminiscent of an MGM film like the Barbara Stanwyk vehicle A Woman in Jeopardy

(1953), David’s is more in keeping with Warner Bros.’s grittier noir films, complete with

Raymond Chandleresque voiceover narration. Thus the episode insists on film literacy,

eschewing any relation to the neo-noir films currently populating the silver screen5

and instead harkening back to classic noir (ironically most often available on the small

screen at this time).

Fig. 4 and 5


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Two dream sequences, two versions of characters, story, and aesthetics (2.4)

18 This film literacy is rewarded twice over, both by the pleasure of recognition for the

aficionado, and with the (repeated!) consummation of the “will they/won’t they?”

relationship that the lead characters have maintained for dozens of hours at this point

in the series.

19 At the same time, the tongue-in-cheek nature of the language used in the opening

moments of the episode offers up this homage as a pastiche, an element that is

foregrounded in David’s dream sequence, featuring Maddie’s character Rita as a

veritable cliché of the femme fatale in her quest to seduce a man to free her from her

husband:

David/Zach sits in the window, a neon “Hotel” sign in the background blinking “H-

O-T”, as Maddie/Rita enters in a black dress.

David/Zach (voiceover): Wow. Could she make an entrance or what? She smelled of

violets, and rainy nights. What I didn’t realize was, she also smelled … of trouble.

[Maddie/Rita enters, slinks towards Zach, and they immediately begin to embrace

passionately as seductive music begins, and the camera zooms in on the couple

while now only the letters “H-O” are apparent in the background. The image

dissolves into David/Zach smoking in the foreground as a sheet-clad Maddie/Rita

drinks in bed.]

David/Zach: I don’t suppose your husband knows where you are.

Maddie/Rita: He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care.

David/Zach: Maybe he’d care if he knew.

Maddie/Rita: Maybe. I don’t care. I don’t know. You know? (2.4)


Miranda, 20 | 2020

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20 The sequence is fairly clear in its juxtaposition of thematic continuity, stylistic

pastiche, and aesthetic innovation. Here the nighttime dream sequence allows the

intimacy that the daytime, workplace reality of the series prohibits, allowing the co-

workers to become a couple, at least while the dream sequence holds sway.

Interestingly, here as in most other dream sequences, consummation is not a happy

ending, but the beginning of trouble: from David’s perspective, Maddy may be “hot”,

but she’s also a “ho”, and her husband is an invisible presence in the bedroom.

Fig. 6 and 7

The femme fatale, seductive but dangerous…

21 The idea of perspective of course highlights the very subjective nature of not just these

“he said/she said” dream sequences, but of the dream sequence in general: while David

is characterized by his charismatic cool, the voiceover typical of noir offers another

form of intimacy, a look into Zach’s thoughts generally unavailable to viewers in the

diegetic present. The suggestion that the character fears ceding control of the

relationship to his romantic interest (Maddie/Rita is very much the aggressor in this


Miranda, 20 | 2020

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encounter, and follows this exchange by demanding that he get her a drink … and

eventually kill her husband), gives the viewer a diegetic reason for the characters not

to be together as David and Maddie in the daylight hours (other than the production’s

fear of changing the series’ status quo).

22 Beyond this, however, the perspective and the aesthetics of the sequence emphasize

this as a performance: of desire, of character, of genre. Choosing to stage this

consummation through the generic framework of noir allows these different aspects to

coalesce: by choosing dream sequences, we maintain the importance of the night, and

suggest that this frees the characters from their professional obligations (both Maddie

and David and their 1930s counterparts work together). Noir’s famous voiceovers give

an inside perspective to the tough-guy attitudes of the protagonist, and can serve as a

tool to further develop characters and themes that are significant to the series; at the

same time, one of the prominent themes of the genre was forbidden passion, where

domestic bliss was impossible (or unattractive), and adulterous love was the norm (as

we see here)–and this suggests that the relationship between these two characters, in

the present or the past, is fraught with danger, and doomed to failure.

23 Indeed, in proper postmodern fashion, both consummation and genre are ultimately

impossible to attain: after all, as Frederic Jameson reminds us, we can no longer make a

noir film—among other things, now that we, unlike the makers of noir, are fully

cognizant of its tropes—we can only pastiche it. And indeed, the humor of the passage

is largely dependent on its exaggerated conformity to noir’s generic tropes (as with the

dichotomy of “hot”/“ho”, or the femme fatale’s empty dialogue “I don’t know, you

know?” in contrast to the witty commentary offered up by the “tough guy” narrator).

At the same time, the overt use of tropes that are explicitly filmic and evocative of the

past suggest the universal and timeless nature of male-female relations–and thus their

insoluble nature. Ultimately, the murder that inspires this episode is not solved, and

both characters remain convinced that their counterparts are the victims of the other’s

villainy.

Maddie: Thought about our little disagreement yesterday?

David: What little disagreement was that?

Maddie: The Flamingo Cove murder!

David: I didn’t give it a second thought.

Maddie: Me either. Still, you get all worked up over a question neither one of us will

ever be able to answer.

David: Yeah. [He gazes at Maddie through voiceover]

David (voiceover): I can answer it. She had it planned from the beginning. She set

him up, just like the bartender said. Used him, and tossed him away.

[Cut to Maddie gazing at David.]

Maddie (voiceover): I know what happened. It’s what always happens. He took

advantage of a good woman.

[Shot-countershot of the two leads simply staring at one another as alternating

voiceovers continue:]


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David (voiceover): She used him.

Maddie (voiceover): He betrayed her.

David (voiceover): She sold him down the river.

Maddie (voiceover): She loved him.

David (voiceover): He would have done anything for her.

Maddie: Well?

David: Another day, another dollar.

Maddie (grumpily): Yeah. (voiceover) Animal!

David (voiceover): Sexist! [He closes her office door.] (2.4)

24 The subjectivity in the voiceover of the dream sequence carries over into working

hours, highlighting how little the viewer normally knows of the characters’ interiority.

Likewise, looking at this and other dream sequences before the lead characters

consummated their relationship in episode 3.14 suggests that “the Moonlighting effect”

was actually built into the series itself. What the final exchange intimates is that

ultimately post-feminist figure Maddie and traditional macho figure David are unable

to coexist except through conflict, making gender wars the show’s version of narrative

conflict necessary to create story at all. Even in these moments when the series allows

some form of romantic reward, that reward is accompanied by a warning of the dire

consequences it entails. Thus while the use of noir makes the tragic ending to any

romantic entanglements inevitable, another of the fiction’s well-known dream

sequences places David and Maddie in the roles of Katarina and Petruchio in The Taming

of the Shrew (3.7), ostensibly allowing for a happier (though perhaps no less

problematic) ending for the couple. Here however, the series insists on the caveat that

the relationship is less than consensual, where the bride must literally be tied up in

order to be present for the wedding, and Petruchio must be the one to bow to his wife’s

opinions to keep the peace. The only less problematic example of a successful

relationship happens when Maddie learns that David has been married before (3.6), and

a long dance sequence (choreographed by Stanley Donen of Singing in the Rain fame)

plays out his failed relationship before Maddy appears to soothe his broken heart–only

to immediately wake up as soon as the kissing begins.

25 However, this most famous dream sequence episode, “The Dream Sequence Always

Rings Twice”, might more profitably be examined in relation to a later episode after the

lead couple consummate their relationship, and the dreaded “Moonlighting effect” is in

play. The similarities between the two episodes suggest that in these dream sequences,

the series explicitly remakes not just the films to which it alludes, but indeed its own

previous episode. Entitled “Here’s Living with You, Kid” (4.13), the later episode

similarly includes two dream sequences remaking well-known films in order to

comment on the romantic relationship between two of the show’s characters–but here

the relationship is that of the two principal secondary characters, Herbert (Curtis

Armstrong) and Agnes (Allyce Beasley), who are currently in a successful relationship

(in stark contrast to David and Maddie, who are estranged after she fled to another city,


Miranda, 20 | 2020

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became pregnant, and married someone else). This is the sole episode of the series in

which neither of the protagonists appears; instead, the show focuses on Herbert’s

insecurities, as he asks Agnes to move in with him, and panics when she hesitates.

Unable to sleep, Herbert’s late-night viewing of classic cinema becomes a commentary

on his fears about their relationship. The dream sequences here make the implicit link

to film explicit, where Herbert essentially inserts himself and his beloved into the

classic films playing on his television screen. Like the previous episode, the show

eschews color to mimic the black and white of classical Hollywood cinema, but here the

inability to express oneself that afflicts Maddie/Rita’s version of the femme fatale is

heightened, as the sequence uses the intertitles of silent cinema, in a call back to

Rudolph Valentino’s blockbuster hit The Sheik in 1921. It’s a tale that has aged very

badly, of a woman kidnapped by the titular sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan, as a plaything,

but who eventually grows to love her; she initially resists when he tries to force himself

on her, but in the course of the story eventually yields to his seduction after he saves

her from someone even worse (and she discovers that his parents were actually

European…). The film was an enormous success, responsible not just for Valentino’s

burgeoning career, but for a veritable flood of Orientalist tales of exotic men forcing

virtuous women to succumb to their charms, both in film and written fictions. Here the

racist nature of the 1921 film is played for comic effect, and the repulsion/attraction of

the female lead for the titular sheik becomes a more straightforward rejection of an

unattractive suitor: Bert’s stereotypical sheik regalia includes a veil over the bottom

half of his face, more commonly seen in female Orientalist costumes. When he reveals

himself as “Prince Ally Ahmed” and does away with the veil hiding his face, Agnes’s

shock and her attempts to dissuade him from his seduction couches her refusal in

equally stereotypical terms … of the spouse giving excuses to avoid coitus: “Do you

have an aspirin? […] I really have a splitting headache … plus I still have this awful

sunburn on my back… I think it will blister and probably peel… my lips are chapped… I

feel achy all over… I must have a terrible allergy to camels” (4.13)


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Fig. 8

Mixing (Orientalist) gender tropes

26 The enticement of the Valentino role is of course already more difficult for a

contemporary viewer to perceive given the very problematic depictions of race and

gender in the film, and this depiction of an iconic romance is further deflated both by

the “old-timey” dramatic piano music and the exaggerated mannerisms characteristic

of silent film. The viewer has already witnessed the more “realistic” depiction of a

successful relationship between these two characters in the daylight hours, and the

film traditions are no longer escapist, allowing the viewer to experience a heightened

fantasy version of the lead couple, but instead a mannered, problematic version our

secondary characters, where the very lack of consummation has become part of the

joke. The sultry nature of the noir sequence here becomes overly dramatic and willfully

artificial.

27 The episode returns to the present just long enough for Herbert to find another

channel showing old films late at night before a new dream sequence ensues, this time

as Casablanca. The series once again willfully contradicts one of the most famous

romances in film history, offering up an Elsa that is more than willing to leave Rick

behind in Moonlighting’s version of the farewell scene:

Agnes/Elsa: Bert-

Herbert/Rick: Agnes, there’s a time for talking and a time for listening, and the way

I see it, it’s time for me to do the talking for both of us. What we feel, what we need,

none of that matters anymore. Maybe someday you’ll understand that the problems

of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Maybe

someday I’ll understand why I always talk like that. But for now … [he reaches over

to touch her face] Here’s looking at you, kid.

Agnes/Elsa [puzzled]: Here’s looking at me? What does that mean, here’s looking at


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me?

Herbert/Rick: Never mind. I’m just telling you, we’ve got to put aside our own

desires, our own needs, and you’ve got to do the right thing, you’ve got to get on

that plane, where you belong.

Agnes/Elsa: Of course I’m getting on that plane! It’s leaving any minute. Besides,

Victor’s on board–where else would I go? [cut to Herbert, looking crestfallen, then

back to Agnes, who realizes what he suggesting:] Ohhh. You thought … you and I…

[She begins to laugh.] (4.13)

28 In many ways the two episodes show themselves to be diametrically opposed: while the

earlier noir episode sought to maintain or even heighten the tension between the two

beautiful leads, the later episode seeks to deflate any hint of romance between the less

conventionally attractive secondary characters; while the earlier sequences opposed

the daylight relationship between David and Maddie with the wish fulfillment of the

night’s dreams, Herbert’s fears for his relationship stem in part from his job interfering

with his private life (he’s been on nightly stakeouts for weeks). The later episode has

moved from pastiche to overt parody, but the source of the parody is as much

Moonlighting as these classic films.

29 At the same time, “Here’s Living with You, Kid” also changes the nature of that

universal timeless and insoluble romance. Whereas “The Dream Sequence Always Rings

Twice” insists on the transgressive nature of the noir past, allowing the characters the

freedom to act on desires that are taboo in the light of day, “Here’s Living with You,

Kid” suggests that on the contrary, these past ideals of masculinity are anathema to a

successful relationship, and constrain Herbert rather than freeing him. By insisting on

their framework (in the carefully placed shots of television set, introductory title card,

and presenter introducing the films), and showing their distance from the

characterization of Herbert, making him an absurd version of famous romantic leads

Valentino or Bogart, the episode suggests that these role models are indeed no longer

transgressions, but types that may destroy the romance they are intended to inspire.

Thus the rest of the episode shows Agnes agree to move in, but only once Herbert

abandons these dated stereotypes of male virility. In the light of day, he first feigns

disinterest, in keeping with his dream roles, and when Agnes leaves indignantly, he

ultimately prostrates himself before her, professing his love, and being rewarded

accordingly. The switch from general pastiche of noir to specific adaptations of The

Sheik or Casablanca, from dialogue between the episodes’ two sequences to repetition of

a single character’s voice (and insecurity), and from romantic tension to romantic

deflation, ultimately resolves the question of will they/won’t they–but the absence of

the main characters suggests that their own strictly held gender norms, as seen in the

noir dream sequences, extinguish any hope for a relationship: in an episode a few

weeks before (4.10), Maddy has a dream sequence contrasting a fatherly David, who

dons an eye mask at 8:30 sharp (played by iconic “good guy” Pat Boone), with “bad boy”

David, a creature of the night (and object of Maddie’s reluctant desire). To our

successful modern couple Herbert and Agnes, these past models literally make no sense

(“Here’s looking at me? What does that mean?”); however, as its name indicates, the

relationship between Maddie and David ultimately belongs to the moonlight, and will

not survive the light of day.


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Conclusion

30 Perhaps the same can be said for the series as a whole–by structuring the show around

an explosive relationship, by relying on postmodernism and pastiche to the detriment

of plot (Jameson could have effectively used this series as an example in his critique of

postmodernism), the show was hard pressed to maintain itself in the endless present

that characterizes American television. Though the series was of course more than the

binary before/after shown here, the comparison of these two episodes and their dream

sequences allows for a better understanding both of the fiction’s dominant

characteristics, and the innately brilliant (but flawed) nature of its premise.

Nonetheless, as one of the first truly literate and openly metafictional television shows,

joyfully multiplying its references and inside jokes, Moonlighting ushered in a new

understanding of what television was and could be–and for that, television scholars and

viewers can only be profoundly grateful.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blood Simple, dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen, Circle Films, 1984.

Body Double, dir. Brian De Palma, Columbia Pictures, 1984.

Body Heat, dir. Lawrence Kasdan, Warner Bros., 1981.

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, and Film (2008). New York: Columbia

University Press, 2013.

Bringing Up Baby, dir. Howard Hawkes, RKO Radio Pictures, 1938.

Burkhead, Cynthia. Dreams in American Television Narratives: From Dallas to Buffy. New York:

Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Cain, James M. Double Indemnity (1936). London: Orion, 2005.

---. The Postman always Rings Twice (1934). New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2010.

Casablanca, dir. Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros., 1942.

Cheers, NBC, 1982–1993.

Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder, Paramount, 1944.

Friends, NBC, 1994–2004.

“Glenn Gordon Caron”. Television Academy Foundation. May 31, 2019. https://

interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/glenn-gordon-caron

Hammett, Dashiel. The Thin Man (1934). London: Vintage, 1989.

Hatchuel, Sarah. Rêves et séries américaines: La fabrique d’autres mondes. Aix-en-Provence: Rouge

profond, 2015.

Hill Street Blues, NBC, 1981–1987.


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Horowitz, Joy. “The Madcap behind Moonlighting.” The New York Times. March 30 1986. https://

www.nytimes.com/1986/03/30/magazine/the-madcap-behind-moonlighting.html

Jameson, Frederic. “Postmodernism and the Consumer Society.” The Cultural Turn: Selected

Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998. London: Verso, 1998.

L.A. Law, NBC, 1986–1994.

The Lady from Shanghai, dir. Orson Welles, Columbia Pictures, 1947.

The Life of an American Fireman, dir. Edwin S. Porter, Edison Studios, 1903.

The Office, NBC, 2005–2013.

Paskin, Willa. “Celebrating the brilliance of Moonlighting.” Salon March 9 2013. https://

www.salon.com/2013/03/09/rewind_celebrating_the_brilliance_of_moonlighting/

The Philadelphia Story, dir. George Cukor, MGM, 1940.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, dir. Tay Garnett, MGM, 1946.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, dir. Bob Rafelson, Paramount, 1981.

Rashomon, dir. Akira Kurosawa, Daiei Films, 1950.

St. Elsewhere, NBC, 1982–1988.

Sherlock Junior, dir. Buster Keaton, Metro-Goldwyn Pictures, 1924.

The Sheik, dir. George Melford, Paramount, 1921.

Singing in the Rain, dirs. Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, MGM, 1952.

The Thin Man, dir. W.S. Van Dyke, MGM, 1934.

The Third Man, dir. Carol Reed, London Films, 1949.

Touch of Evil, dir. Orson Welles, Universal Pictures, 1958.

Thompson, Robert J. Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. NY: Continuum

Publishing, 1996.

Walters, James. Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema: Resonance Between Realms. Bristol: Intellect,

2008.

Williams, JP. “The Mystique of Moonlighting: ‘When You Care Enough to Watch the Very Best.’”

The Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 16, n ° 3, 1988, 90–100.

A Woman in Jeopardy, dir. John Sturges, MGM, 1953.

X-Files, Fox, 1993–2018.

NOTES

1. Thompson posits that the first days of television in the 1950s represented a first Golden Age,

creating many of the forms and traditions that are still adhered to some 70 years later (sitcoms

with bright lighting, multiple cameras, and a live studio audience, game and variety shows, etc.),

while the 1980s developed a new and more complex form of television drama, with more complex

characters, ongoing storylines, and heightened realism (series like St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues,

LA Law).


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2. “Will they/won’t they?” has become a well-used trope in television, from Ross and Rachel in

Friends to Mulder and Scully on X-Files or Jim and Pam on The Office. Because of “The

Moonlighting effect”, the answer was often that “they won’t”, though this has slowly changed

since then (as these examples demonstrate).

3. Various oral histories (Paskin, Horowitz, Caron) catalog the show’s many production problems,

from writers’ delays in producing scripts to difficult relations between the two leads (and the

production staff).

4. “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice” (2.4), “Big Man on Mulberry Street” (3.6), “Atomic

Shakespeare” (3.7), “It’s a Wonderful Job” (3.8), “A Trip to the Moon” (4.1), “Come Back Little

Shiksa” (4.2), “Tracks of My Tears” (4.10), “Here’s Living with You, Kid” (4.13), “A Womb with a

View” (5.1), “I See England, I See France, I See Maddie’s Netherworld” (5.7).

5. Films like Blood Simple (1984), Body Heat (1981), Body Double (1984), or the remake of The Postman

Always Rings Twice (1981).

ABSTRACTS

The 1980s series Moonlighting was one of the first dramedies on the small screen; it took its cue

from venerable genres like the screwball comedy or the hard-boiled novel (particularly The Thin

Man) and translated them to television’s changing structures and aesthetics, participating in

what has been termed the second Golden Age of television. However, the Nick and Norah Charles

of Moonlighting, David and Maddie, were not married: on the contrary, the series was largely

fuelled by the tension between the two leads, who were constantly sparring but were seemingly

drawn to one another. Though this romantic tension has long been a staple of the silver screen,

translating it into weekly episodes was more complicated—like its sitcom counterpart Cheers, also

airing at the time, the writers struggled to maintain the central tension without creating undue

frustration for the viewer. Moonlighting chose a particularly novel solution: the dream sequence.

While David and Maddie continued to spar in “real/reel” life, the series offered regular dream

sequences where they consummated their relationship either as themselves or as others. These

dream sequences allowed for aesthetic and narrative innovation while maintaining thematic

continuity: David and Maddie appear in dance sequences, in film noir, in The Taming of the Shrew,

where they become the couple that the series keeps postponing. More than consummation, then,

the series offers the performance of that consummation, voluntarily coded in different genres

and styles, to the extent that the brief period where the two characters were a couple within the

diegesis was met with general disappointment from fans and creators alike. This article explores

the way that the series plays with genre, style, and viewer expectations in these different dream

sequences.

La séries Moonlighting était une des premières séries de “dramedy” à paraître sur le petit écran,

une fiction inspirée par le screwball comedy et le roman noir (hard-boiled novel), et qui transposait

ces influences au cadre des structures et esthétiques télévisuelles. De ce fait, Moonlighting

participait pleinement à l’évolution du média et de ce qu’on appelle le deuxième âge d’or de la

télévision. Le rapport conflictuel entre les deux protagonistes constituait une trame majeure de

la série. Alors que cette tension romantique a longtemps été habituelle sur le grand écran,

traduire ce trope en un récit sériel était bien plus compliqué pour les scénaristes, qui cherchaient

un équilibre entre suspense dans le récit et frustration du spectateur. Moonlighting a choisi une


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solution plutôt novatrice : la séquence de rêve. Alors que les querelles des protagonistes David et

Maddie continuaient en journée, la série offraient des séquences de rêve nocturnes qui

permettaient au couple d’avoir la relation amoureuse que les spectateurs attendaient. Ces

séquences étaient un lieu d’innovations esthétiques et narratives tout en gardant une certaine

continuité thématique : David et Maddie apparaissent dans des séquences de danse, dans un film

noir, dans une version de La Mégère apprivoisée. Ainsi la relation amoureuse devient ouvertement

performance, dans divers styles et genres—et de fait lorsque cette relation s'est établie « de

jour », le public en fut déçu. Cet article explore la façon dont la série joue avec le genre, le style,

et les attentes du public dans ces différentes séquences de rêve.

INDEX

Keywords: Moonlighting, TV series, dream sequence, gender

Mots-clés: Moonlighting, série télévisée, séquences de rêve, gender

AUTHORS

SHANNON WELLS-LASSAGNE

Professeur des Universités

Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté

[email protected]


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